Seven Things not to report in a bug
Over the years I’ve been handed quite a number of bugs to track, fix, contemplate, investigate, eradicate, duplicate, compensate, and ignore. This has all come about through either past clients, co-workers, or direct overseers. With that said, here are seven things in all good fun that I don’t need to hear.
Seven things you shouldn’t say when reporting a bug to a developer
- This font is ugly: I’m sorry, let me change the css from
font-style:ugly;tofont-style:pretty;. If it’s noted in some specification on a requirements list, then by all means, just tell me that instead. For something that can be subjective, who’s one to say what’s ugly or pretty. One man’s verdana is another man’s georgia. - This page is messed up: Really? Enlighten me.
- I don’t understand how to use this: Great. Thousands of dollars lost on all those test cases. What were we thinking?
- Awkward Interaction: Does it work? Is it broken? Are you clicking anything? Is it awkward to just you?
- Please add ’such and such’ to the code: Thank you very much. Would you like to fix the rest of the bugs?
- This runs slow on my machine: Did you test this anywhere else? Wait, aren’t you the one who continually uses Mac OS8? I can remember countless of times I’d receive a bug because someone would be doing some testing at home on a computer that is 0.001% of our user base.
- The text is wrong: A Developers nightmare of receiving a content bug. Generally, developers aren’t responsible for what a document says. Granted if it’s a typo, then yea… it could be our fault, but I’ve received this bug enough that it was just plain out not my fault.
What’s your seven?
October 27th, 2005 at 7:25 am
This isn’t quite a bug report list, but a few things I’ve heard in the past from clients/coworkers that still make me cringe.
•”This doesn’t look EXACTLY like the comp.”
•”Can you make the color scheme a little less green.”(After approval of comp, on XHTML prototype presentation.)
•”Can you make the whole thing flash?”
•”It doesn’t look right in IE(Insert number < 5.5).”
•Can this be animated?
•Looks great, now could you make a mass email template that looks like it?
•”Hey Jason, I’ve got a client on the phone from the UK, they have an existing html only site that they want you integrate our cart with it. By the way, it’s purple and they sell harp music and training books.”
October 28th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
1. Why the heck am I getting popups at my site???
(gee…I dunno…could it be the 3000 3rd party scripts you added after I finished your site?)
2. The image isn’t showing
(wow, I didn’t know there was one, single, end-all, be-all image, and it’s on your site…)
3. It doesn’t work in Mac IE on OS X
(since you’re an idiot using Mac IE on OS X when 1) Safari is the default and 2) Microsoft doesn’t even support it anymore, I’m going to play dumb and pretend I didn’t even read that)
4. I didn’t like the way the divs were ordered in the code, so I moved them around, but now my site is broken
(please refer to article 2, subsection 8 of our terms and conditions: if you break it by doing something stupid, you pay double for me to fix it)
5. I want a website. I agree to your terms and conditions but I don’t want to pay up front.
(so…you don’t agree? bye bye!)
6. Your faq says that you don’t design adult websites…but I don’t want a website design…I just want a blog template!
(uh………………………………..)
7. I can’t get my email and my internet isn’t working!
(uh…when did I go from being your web designer to your ISP?)
BTW, just randomly browsing sites in this Fall’s reboot. :)
October 28th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
haha. thanks wench. glad you could give us your top 7. I laughed reading them and made me feel better.